Today I went to the post office first things and shipped out my manuscript. After spending 7 years writing I really do feel like my manuscript was my child and I only paid $7.40 for my precious child to be handed over to someone else.
My mum and I made it a momentous occasion of pure ridicules proportions. We decided to take pictures… lots of pictures.
So we go into the post office and I’m filling out the address and stuff and the guy behind the counter let me take pictures with him.
When we first walked in I thought everyone in the post office would think that I was a total nutcase because I was so excited about sending my book off. Boy was I wrong! Turn out Michael (the guy behind the counter) was a fantasy geek like me! I found that out when he asked me what genre and I told him mine was fantasy, he’s a fan of Tad Williams (I’m 90% sure it was Tad), and guess who Tad Williams is published by? DAW aka hopefully my future publisher. There was also another man in the post office that was interested in the fact I was sending out my second manuscript. So we swapped business cards. This was quite a crowning achievement for me as it was the first time I had actually swapped cards with someone. The majority of my cards go out in my books that I sign. I also gave Michael one. Again a new thing, no one had ever asked me for a business card.
All around not only did I send my manuscript off to DAW but I felt like a real important author. I know I have ages to go before I really am… but it felt nice to feel famous for a few minutes. It made me even more confident about sending it out. Everybody cross your fingers that DAW just loves the book!
So on the way out I had to pose with my receipt…
Over all it was a very satisfying day!
Cheers,
After dropping Hunter off my mum and I decided to take a short detour to Dayton Ohio. Why Dayton? The Air Force Museum is there and there is a plane we’ve been wanting to see. I’ve wanted to see the real thing since I saw the old photo in the antique store.
I’ve been coming to LBI every summer since I was baby. I don’t remember the first time I meet my Pig Man but I remember we visited him every summer. I get ahead of myself though… I’ll start with who my Pig Man was and why he’s a Pig Man.
Richard Dahlstedt, aka Mr. D, was my Pig Man. He owned an antique, The Attic, a few block from my beach house. I had originally called him Pig Man because he collected pigs. My favorite one was behind the counter, it had a little sign that said “I’m not for sail but my owner is.” Later I called him Pig Man because I’d read a book for school by Paul Zindel called The Pig Man and Me and in it somewhere it said that the Pig Man knew the secret of life and to me Mr. D was the wisest man I knew.
Even though I was young he taught me a lot of things. I don’t remember everything he taught me but the most important one I remember vividly. It was a hot summer day and he was telling us stories about when he was in the war. He had been a bombardier in a B-24 Bomber during the Second World War. He was telling us about when he had given the command to drop the bomb as he had thought they were over an enemy plane but he later found out it was an American plane they had destroyed. He cried a lot during the story and at the end he passed on some wise words “Never be afraid to cry.”
He was not usually a gloomy person as he always had a joke or two for us. My favorite joke went something like this “A man was driving down the road and he saw a penguin in the middle of the road so he stopped and picked it up. A few minutes later he gets pulled over by a police officer. The officer asks ‘Sir is that a penguin?’ and the man replies ‘Of course it is.’ The officer says ‘Then you should take that penguin to the zoo.’ So the man drives off again. Later that day he’s pulled over by the same police officer and the officer says ‘Sir didn’t I tell you to take that penguin to the Zoo?’ ‘Yes. And I did. He had a great time, now we’re going to the aquarium.’” I remember we laughed our butts off at this joke.
He also taught me to love pigs. He didn’t have very many of them but I wanted a lot of pigs. So I’ve been collecting pigs for years now. I just love them, and they remind me of my pig man. Before I’d left for college I had a “piggy shrine” in my room. It took up a whole shelf on the bookshelves. Now sadly they’re packed away till I move to London where I’ll have to find a place for them.
When the end of the summer would come we’d visit him one last time and ever year he told us the same thing. “If I’m not here next year, don’t cry for me.” I knew he was talking about dying, he was old when we’d met him, like into his 80s old. We’d always promise not to cry. I didn’t think I would after all his wife had been dead for years and he missed her and I knew that he’d be happy to be with her again. Besides he knew he was reaching that point where the 10 winter months was a long time for us to be away.
The summer came when he was really sick and in bed most of the time. That summer when we left I knew it would be the last time I saw my Pig man. His daughter wrote us a letter that winter telling us our Pig Man had passed away. I didn’t cry. I was happy that he was finally with his wife again.
It’s been quite a few summers since then and I still remember all the fun times we spent with my Pig Man. The building The Attic was in is now a surf shop and every time I pass it I remember the numerous stories he’d told us and I can’t help but smile at how lucky I was to meet Mr. D.
Mr. D had told us a lot about World War 2 and his plane he’d flown. He also told us that it was at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. Now Ohio is a bit of a hike from Jersey and we’d never really had a need to go out that way so we’d never had a chance to go visit Mr. D’s plane. So when we moved Hunter out for school Dayton was only an hour from Lima. Obviously my mum and I had to.
We weren’t too sure where the plane was so we stopped and asked one of the guys working there. It was funny because he knew exactly where it was and it’s one of his favorite planes to visit and take pictures of. The Strawberry Bitch was tucked away in the back corner and was one of the few planes you could walk all the way around. So it was perfect to take lots of pictures of.
It was just like the picture Mr. D had hanging up in his shop. But I hadn’t realized it was so big. And how big is a B-24? The wing span is 110 feet. It’s 66 feet 44 inches long and 17 feet 11 inches high. Get this it weighs 56,000 pounds when loaded. It was also really moving to see the actual bomber Mr. D had flown after seeing it in a small picture for years. For me it was the perfect way to end the trip to Ohio.
Cheers,
It’s been a long time since I’ve posted anything about my writing so I’ll kick a whole new round of writing related posts off with some awesome news. I finished the last round of edits on Entangled Fates yesterday. July 4th at 8:24pm.
Now this is quite a few years in the making. I started writing my series when I was in 7th grade which is 7 years ago now. As I read the last line of my book I thought about everything that I’d put into this to get to the point where I’m so much in love with it that I’m confident to send it out into the world. I don’t know how many hours I spent writing and editing it but I’d be willing to guess it’s been a couple hundred hours. There were a few times that I didn’t think it was going to be worth it but now… now it’s totally worth it!
I’m also quite tired of it… I hate to say it but I’m ready to stop reading it over and over. How could I possibly be tired of my precious book? Well it’s changed a lot and taken a lot of my brain power to work everything straight.
When I first started writing it all out in notebooks it was really going to be straightforward and rather cliché. It was also going to be one book. They were going to get all fours pieces and have a happy ending to boot all in one book. Back then it seemed like a brilliant idea to me. So I kept writing all through the 8th grade finishing a few notebooks in the process. Somewhere along the way I’d changed my mind and decided I wanted a series. I finished writing the first draft in notebooks and felt triumphant.
Then I realized that hand written material wasn’t acceptable to send to publishers. So I started typing it all up. When I reopened my first notebook I realized what I’d written was complete crap so I scanned the rest of the notebooks and realized the whole plot was shit.
That’s when I outlined a new series to write. I set aside my very first draft and kept in mind a few of my favorite parts as I started a new first draft. I don’t remember when I first started it but I finished it freshman year in college.
I started reading from the beginning and realized that once again it was shitty. I’d changed characters and the eventual ending so much that the beginning made no sense. So the first half of the book underwent extensive changes.
And now after three more rounds of edits I look at the finished manuscript and I picked out the things that were the same as my very first original story from 7th grade. Here’s the dismal list:
1) Neal’s name
2) Jamie’s name
3) Billy/Tantin’s name
4) Reuniting the Armlet
5) Exyel and Lawrence names and cities
And that’s all I could pin. It’s under gone a lot of work to get to the shinning gem it now is. Another thing that I love is the word count. I’ve done three rounds of edits from what’s saved on my laptop as the original. I had older copies but switching between computers they slipped between cracks somewhere never to be found. But check this out.
Original - 143.551 words
1st round - 127.792 words
2nd round - 129.808 words
Final - 123.823 words
I love that I cut so much. Most of it from the original to 1st round was plot lines I didn’t need, characters that were useless, and fluffy scenes that wasted time. And from the 2nd round to the final was simply word smithing, that’s a whole other post. In short I simply took out useless words and sentences and picked one word to replace two. Hard work but it makes everything flow easier and read faster which makes the effort worth it.
Now all that’s left is to write my cover letter and send the whole lot off to DAW books. Everyone cross your fingers that DAW picks me up. They’re pretty much my dream publishing house as the publish most of my favorite authors (like Pat Rothfuss).
Cheers,
I seem to be getting backed up on blog posts. Plus being at the beach means that I only have internet at the library. I’m still working on one more from Ohio and my adventure to the Air Force Museum. But I still need to research a little more before that’s truly done.
On to the good stuff then. Today is the 4th of July. The Birth of America and all that good stuff. As I watched the fireworks tonight it hit me… this might very well be my last 4th of July for a good few years. Then that got me thinking back on all the good times I’ve had on the 4th.
Obviously the fireworks are a main feature in every memory. When my brother’s and I were younger we would sit on the top of our van to watch the fireworks. Our beach house is situated perfectly because we can see the display from our front yard, now travel necessary.
This year it was only my mum and I watching and we found quite the comfy place to watch. Turns out we could see it from her bedroom window. So we chilled on the bed with our dogs and watched. I took some pretty nifty pictures and enjoyed my 4th of July.
Cheers,
